To date there exist several methods for manufacturing such a plate shaped product, such as for example a floor product. A first typical method for manufacturing a (mainly plastic) floor product in roll shape is described in patent application US-A-2004/0102120. According to this known method a continuous multiple coating process is carried out to apply several layers on top of each other.
Typically such layers may comprise a plastic backing layer, a carrier, a plastic printing layer, a decorative print layer and a plastic protective layer. The roll shaped floor product obtained may be converted into modular floor products. This known coating method generally produces highly flexible and soft floor products. Such a flexibility is inherent to the coating method which uses plastisols with a low viscosity which is controlled by a number of liquids in the plastisol, such as plasticizers, diluents and additives. During a subsequent gelling process the plastisols gel and the separate layers are interconnected. The plasticizers act as softeners for keeping the final floor product flexible.
Patent application US-A-2007/0166516 describes another typical method for producing (mainly plastic) modular floor products by calendering and laminating techniques. According to this known method several continuous sheet or foil shaped layers are produced by calendering, whereafter these layers are laminated together using a continuous laminating process.
As an alternative for this known continuous laminating a so-called hot press method may be used which defines a discontinuous laminating process using short slabs cut from the produced sheet or foil shaped layers.